A case came under my supervision some three weeks ago. A boy of sixteen applied at the Murdock Academy for admission. I recognized him as a boy from the public schools who had baffled parents and teachers. Some said he could not learn; others thought he could if he would. Regardless of all opinions, he failed in his work; he played truant, stayed out at night, lied, tricked his parents and teachers; and, in various ways, proved an unsolved problem. I proceeded to give him a physical and mental test. (1) I tested his power to grip; (2) I tested his rate of nerve fatigue. (We find that there is a very close relation between nerve fatigue and mental fatigue.) He was strong and had splendid endurance, far above the average. I then tested his motor ability and found it high. I then tested his rapidity and accurracy of perception, which was very good. I then tested his visual memory and found that strong; then his auditory memory and found that nearly as good; and finally I tested his logical memory and that was excellent. I found his physical and mental powers in close harmony. By this method I had eliminated him from the dullard or the gusher. He had the ability of the brilliant but belonged to the unawakened. I found that his waywardness was not due to any bad habits which could have induced this condition. The only cause left, I felt, was heredity.

I assigned the boy to the seventh grade with the remark that he had a splendid mind and that he could learn anything he undertook. This remark proved true and for four weeks his work was far above the average. With ease he mastered every lesson. I met with the parents and told them of the results I had obtained. I assured the parents that heredity was responsible for most of the trouble. "It is rather a delicate matter," I said to the mother, "but I believe there were conditions surrounding you before the birth of the boy which were responsible for the disposition of your son." After asking a few questions, she frankly told me that the boy was acting out what she felt for two or three years before his birth. She informed me that she had never told this before. At this juncture her husband said that his wife was not to blame, for he, at that time, was leading a life which caused his wife to feel and act as she did. The boy's nature baffled every approach, for his case had been wrongly diagnosed. Nature is stronger than culture and only when

rightly interpreted can culture modify nature. I remarked to the parents that their son deserved greater patience and consideration at their hands. They should cease to coerce his life, but lovingly modify his character towards the normal life; whatever else they did, not to consider his life criminal but unfortunate. He had a brilliant mind with an unfortunate disposition. Varied indeed are the ways in reaching individuals. Some can be interpreted through studying their physical condition, and no other

way.

Not long since a case came under my observation. It was a boy of twelve who was classed as a wayward and an incorrigible. Every effort in attempting to control him had failed. He was taken to a dentist under the direction of Dr. Holmes. His eyes, ears, etc., were tested, but they were normal. Finally the dentist examined the boy's mouth and found his teeth were crowded and distorted. The dentist assured Dr. Holmes that the boy's condition was due to his teeth. Several of his teeth were removed. Within a short time his nervous and irritable disposition was changed. He became communicable and companionable which before he was not. He began to take an interest in his studies and was obedient. The boy now gives promise of becoming a splendid citizen. Due to a physical abnormality and an ignorance of its influence, he had been an inmate of a house of correction.

I am convinced that the reason we fail to reach so many of the young is not so much the fault of the students themselves as our inability to interpret rightly their merits and proceed on rational lines to modify their characters. In this paper I have purposely suppressed any discussion of the common methods of reaching the individual student, and have dealt rather with the exceptional methods, and yet the movement of the age is along this line of approach. For the want of it, we have failed alike with the genius and the criminal. There is, I believe, a way to reach, not only every Lucile but every Jean Val Jean.

Speaking in Public

BY OLIVER VAN WAGEN, SYRACUSE, N. Y.

E all have to hear public speakers. We all have opinions as to what constitutes good public speak

W ing. Most of us in the modern conditions of so

ciety are sooner or later forced to speak in public ourselves. In these days not only the attorney, the preacher, the professional man and the lecturer are expected to appear before others, but there is a growing demand for the carpenter, the fruit-grower, the dentist, the metal-worker and the miner who can tell of his work in acceptable terms before men. Any man in no matter what occupation, if he can add to his daily toil the art of speaking out his mind acceptably before his fellows, adds to his own worth and commands a higher wage.

The great public speaker is made, not born. A man with the natural qualifications of a public speaker must do much to make himself efficient. No man knows whether he can speak successfully or not until circumstance has forced him to express himself. The successful speaker is manufactured by education, training and coertion into expressing himself. We say some are able to express themselves. Others go by freight. All freighters may be made into expressers by study and work, chiefly by getting up speed.

Expression is the setting forth of psychical facts by means of physical movements. Of course there must be something to express. While psychology confines itself to the study of mental states using evidences of form and physical movement as a method of that study, and physiology confines itself to the study of form and physical movement using evidences of mental states as a method of study, expression based on these confines itself to the study of those principles which govern the setting forth of mental states by form and physical movements. Good public speaking is a proper combination of mind and body in action. Some men are psychological phenomena of knowledge and mental attainment and yet are tongue-tied in the presence of a small audience.

Other men are wonders of physical gymnastics and dramatic expression of form and are utter failures in public because of imperfect mental concepts behind the outward action.

There are three phases of public expression,-reading, declaiming and orating. Usually all three are confused and when a man fails to be an orator according to the popular conception of that term then that man is said to be a failure as a public speaker. All men are not born readers or born declaimers or born orators, but any given man can, by proper training, be made into a reader, a declaimer or an orator.

Reading seems purely mechanical. Good reading is mechanical and also must be intelligent. Art reading or perfect reading is mechanical, intelligent and personal, having an element of unique personality behind it. In the present day we have lost the power of reading. We have only the cheapest mechanical imitation taught in the public schools. There is but one good reader among a hundred children and if by any manner of means he has become a good reader he has learned from his grandmother or his uncle. Children in grammar schools stumble, palpitate and finally lie prostrate before the simplest page of print. If by any device they are in danger of becoming good readers when they are rushed into the high school, there they are too busy studying political economy, the elements of the earth and the waters under the earth, to take the time to read aloud. In college they are laughed at for even attempting to read aloud, where the Mede and Persian Lecture System prevails. The next generation is being reared to silently peruse and devour but never to read.

There is an impression current, which is undoubtedly correct that the number of volumes of fresh poetry published is increasing each year and that the old poets are sold in greater numbers, yet that poetry is not read and appreciated by the younger generation as by the elder. This is largely due to the decline of reading aloud. Poetry is based on sound and when no sound is heard, poetry is merely a vexatiously awkward way of saying things. Some Germans are so gifted as to read a page of music and be caused to weep for grief or laugh with pleasure in the same keen enjoyment as though the music were actually played and heard. And there are some persons of the same type who can read poetry with as much satisfaction as if it were heard read

aloud, but such are rare and fast becoming rarer as our auditory facilities are nowadays becoming atrophied.

Some one has said that it is a crime to read poetry to one's self and that it ought to be prohibited by law. Legal measures are not necessary, for where poetry is not read aloud it is not read at all usually; there is no reason why it should be. There is good poetry written now and much good prose, but a great deal of both does not seem to have been read aloud by the writers. Reading aloud was not a necessary part of the task of composition. Most of our popular novels, adventure and mystery stories espe cially are vocally unreadable. They are intended to be hurried through; the first sentence of each paragraph is the most important. Our young people read novels today in a "furious rush" skipping all but the most exciting love scenes. A common recommendation of a new book is, "Oh! you can read it in no time." The natural question arises, whether it is worth reading in any time. Even first class novelists of the day have the same fault. A chapter of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's latest book "Marriage a la Mode" read aloud, is a strain upon the voice. Mrs. Wharton is as hard. Dr. Henry Van Dyke's lovely "Out of Doors in the Holy Land" is impossible to read aloud with artistic expression. On the other hand William de Morgan's novels are delightful to listener and reader. They are Dickensian in style and it will be remembered that Dickens' daughter stated that he paced the floor of his study reciting his dialogues as he composed them. James and Meredith, if read visually, must be counted obscure, while read orally, they are easy to follow and comprehend.

Along with our loss of the appreciation of poetry our sense of rythm in prose disappears. The eye unaided loses delicate differences of style and in our system of education the ear receives little training. The student becomes almost entirely eye-minded and philology is given over to secondary senses. Our literature is sounded and voiced by proof-readers. The story runs that the editor of one of our great dictionaries, in order to get the correct pronunciation of a recent scientific word in general use. wrote the man who invented it. The distinguished scientist replied that he did not know how the word was pronounced, as